A typical cultic legend [related by Pomp. Trog. in Justin. X 2]: Hera
commands Stratonike [the Syrian queen] in a dream to establish a temple
at Hierapolis, or else she will suffer misfortune. Indeed, Stratonike falls
ill, but soon recovers when she vows to build the temple.

Thus Stratonike is sent to Hierapolis with treasure and soldiers to
build the temple. In spite of his protests, Combabus is entrusted [by the
king, Stratonike's husband] with the supreme command; [Combabus] fears
Stratonike due to evil rumors. He withdraws for a few days and sadly decides
to remove the occasion for evil: he castrates himself (this motif returns
again in the Attis myth in Prudentius, Perist. X 197 per sectum dedecus
ab impudicae tutus amplexu deae) and places his privates in a small container
with myrrh and honey and other spices, seals it and gives it ceremoniously
to the king, who has it marked with his seal and held in safekeeping. For
three years Combabus worked on the temple. And in fact, Stratonike fell
in love with Combabus, probably under the power of the vengeful Hera. Finally,
she could control her passion no longer and she fell into the madness of
love. In order to be able to declare herself to Combabus, she got herself
drunk, threw herself at his feet and threatened suicide. Then Combabus
admitted the truth to her; the madness stopped, but not the love, and they
lived in an intimate platonic love relationship. The Galli imitate this
relationship: Galli and women are in love with one another and view this
relationship as something holy.

Combabus was denounced and recalled; in one version Stratonike is supposed
to have denounced him, like Potiphar's wife did Joseph. He was charged
with betrayal of trust and ungodliness, and sentenced to death. Combabus
said nothing; but as he was being led to his death, he asked for the jewel
that he had given to the king for safekeeping. At this point everything
is clarified, and the king exonerates him completely. The king has a statue
of him erected in the soon completed sanctuary: the author saw there a
statue of the Rhodian Hermocles, a figure of a woman in men's clothing.

Bloch (Die Prostitution, Berlin 1912 I 106) concludes from the statement
of Pausanias about Attis that "pederastic cults were first introduced by
some few originally homosexual persons." Thus he believes in the invention
of cults: this does not happen and has never happened. There is no doubt:
Combabus and his friends were abnormally oriented with respect to sexuality,
they were members of the so-called intermediate types. For us, the following
three forms are of interest: uranism, feminism, and transvestitism. They
differ from one another in very definite ways: uranism is same-sex love,
which only in exceptional cases seeks a fictional differentiation of the
sexes through clothing. Feminism is the psychosexual feeling in opposition
to the physical-sexual character, in which the man feels himself completely
as a woman (e.g. the Hungarian doctor in Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis
1890): if intercourse with the physically-opposite sex is upheld in this
case, it occurs by compulsion and with contrary quality of feeling, so
that the affected persons admittedly, if external considerations did not
stand in the way, would have carried out their wish to castrate themselves.
With transvestites, finally, there is only a costume-related drive, while
the sexual drive is normal; the transvestite man feels compelled to dress
as a woman (naturally vice-versa as well, e.g. Semiramis Trog. Pomp. in
Justin. I 1), in order to live in accordance with his physical and psychological
needs. It must be kept in mind, however, that the sexual drive in him,
although it is normal, is underdeveloped and in any case he is indifferent
to its exercise. It may also be possible that this lifestyle will meet
the needs of a sexual fetishist; that could lead to an intensification
of one of the three mentioned phenomena, which are primarily congenital
and only secondarily acquired.

Combabus was a transvestite, because he put on women's clothes for ever,
like the Galli. The latter are also Uranians and effeminates; not only
the sources prevent sharper distinctions, the intermediate types themselves
also stand in the way, since it is common knowledge that Uranians prefer
the passive role in intercourse, inasmuch as the intercourse is not totally
limited to embracing and kissing.

In order for the Uranians to secure this cultically superior position,
to which Combabus attests, various preconditions were required:

1. The use of eunuchs to serve noble women. This precondition is necessary
because, aside from the fact that the temple cult demonstrably often developed
from a house or family cult, it frequently finds its best parallels in
the social conditions of the people. Thus, in geographical terms as well,
the domain of transvestite priest-slaves is contiguous with the domain
of the custom of eunuchism. This cannot be ignored, even less because these
Galli were stigmatized (on stigmata, see C. Clemen, Mysterienreligionen
und Sltestes Christentum, Giessen 1913, 28ff. with literature), which has
its striking analogy in the secular slave relationship. Just as important
is the observation that we encounter male transvestites only in the service
of male deities (Hippolytos).

2. The special social status of Uranians: they have always held a special
status in a positive and negative sense: they were deemed possessed by
the divinity, chosen by the divinity itself for its service. Not that their
condition was admired (thus Iwan Bloch, €tiologie 120ff., believes
that at the beginning, feminine, homosexually-feeling persons were gladly
made priests, their inclination appearing to primitive man as something
especially demonic, and later they were artificially cultivated!) ; but
the homosexuals abhorred normal sexual intercourse as something ugly and
disgusting and thus they preached a kind of asceticism which pleased the
divinity; on the other hand, the Uranians themselves are particularly vulnerable
to easy suggestions and religious delusions as a result of their orientation.
Thus precisely the reverse is true, when Bloch, €tiologie etc. p.
78ff., says that the religious state of mind awakens homosexuality; that
is why what Tagyýldynkaschy tried to prove (Friedrich von Hellwald,
Kulturgeschichte, Augsburg 1875, 511) may be true, that only a pederast
could be a great Sufi, but we will not join Bloch, op. cit., in viewing
this as "a typical example of a purely religious generation and exercise
of a homosexual satisfaction of the sexual life."

3. The local centralization of the cults and thus of the priesthoods.
The aforementioned orientation may have made the Uranians appear to be
especially called to priesthood. But that they should exclusively make
up the priesthood was possible only through the centralization of the cults
in a few leading cultic locations, to which the population made pilgrimage
from far away. If the cult had been broadly distributed, then it cannot
be doubted that the Uranians unofficially would have made up only a fraction
of the priesthood, if perhaps a significant one, like today among Christian
theologians. If we assume that in antiquity and in the Orient there were
only as many Uranians as there are among us, that is 1% (M. Hirschfeld,
Der urnische Mensch, 1903, p. 122), and that the total of the other intermediate
types that interest us only make up 0.5% of the population, then it is
immediately clear that, if, in the predominantly religious orientation
of ancient life, even a small fraction of this 1.5% joined the priesthood
of the Galli, then these Galli could recruit exclusively from among them,
and it would not be necessary at all to resort to artificial or violent
motives and disciplines. This significant fraction of the intermediate
types, however, also explains the significance and the broad scope which
this priesthood, organized similarly to our Catholic orders, possessed.
In a population of 10,000, there were 150 Uranians; but at the festivals
50,000 came together, so that this number could rise to 750; if out of
this number only 50 or even fewer dedicated themselves to the priesthood,
or let themselves be won over in the general delirium at the annual festival,
or rather, discovered their calling, then that would correspond approximately
to the percentage which, in core-Catholic areas, the priesthood currently
makes up in proportion to the general population, namely 1:1000. Sexual
abnormality, therefore, would be fully sufficient on its own to cover the
demand for priests of that type. But this makes this priesthood itself
appear in a different light. Let us consider above all the subjective feeling:
they were not unhappy castration victims, stunted and degraded to become
women for the sake of a particular purpose (like once, for example, the
soprano and alto of the papal choir), but rather full human beings to whom
a wish is fulfilled through the castration and whose life's meaning and
enjoyment is increased, quite apart from the religio-ethical aspects. Certainly,
a satisfaction in psychological terms also occurs, while the superior talent
often associated with Uranism must also be taken into account. Moreover,
we can also conclude negatively that this institution did not conflict
with the spirit and sensibility of the population: otherwise it could never
have survived, let alone arisen. But the Galli had not only their counterparts
in non-priestly Uranians, they also had their patrons. They must have possessed
enough moral power to fulfill their religious mission, at least in their
eyes and the eyes of the believers, and that suffices for a religion.

The local centralization had one more advantage, however: it represented
an attraction, as today for example, pilgrimage places and monasteries
do for believers. The one making pilgrimage to them travels with a special
attitude in his thoughts and feelings. Based on this attitude and the anticipated
sensations, a calling arises in the person so oriented. And when the festival
is added to it, with its orgiastic celebrations and the ecstatic goings-on,
then the candidate falls for its effects.

The primary motivations for the institution of the Galli, the prototype
of which is Combabus, are of this kind. Whatever other reasons are argued
(letting alone the symbolic ones) are thoroughly secondary. But the latter
must not be neglected, because they have significantly contributed to the
preservation of the custom, and at a time, when for some reason the primary
reasons would no longer be able to justify the custom, the secondary reasons
carry the custom alone. Insofar as they do not match up with the primary
ones in a back formation, the following [secondary reasons] can also be
argued:
1. ieros gamos, which leads on the one hand to the unio mystica, which
is also alive in Christianity, and on the other hand to the mystical coitus
of a Hieronymus and Venantius Fortunatus. 2. Need for sensation, one wishes
to experience and touch something. 3. Compulsion in various forms, for
example as a betrothal of the parents. 4. Pecuniary advantages, which ever
gave impetus to goliardism and flagellantism.